


Visiting Hours

by bandwidthlimit



Series: Leverage Ficlets [29]
Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25415026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bandwidthlimit/pseuds/bandwidthlimit
Summary: The good news is that they haven't blown the con – part of it was being found out. If he'd thought he was going to be shot, though, he'd have certainly taken the appropriate measures.
Relationships: Sophie Devereaux/Nathan Ford
Series: Leverage Ficlets [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1840567
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	Visiting Hours

**Author's Note:**

> 2011 snippet.

He's not a medical professional or anything, but he knows that dark blood is bad. Any blood is bad in his book, but dark blood is really bad, so when he pulls his hand away from his stomach (it feels eerily familiar, and he tries not to think about the last time he made the exact same movement), he's relieved to see bright red color.

Unfortunately, that doesn't help the pain any, and he immediately presses his hand back against the wound. “Sophie,” he croaks the word, and clears his throat before he tries again. “Soph.”

She's halfway across the building, but he knows they all heard the shot over the comms. The good news is that they haven't blown the con – part of it was being found out. If he'd thought he was going to be shot, though, he'd have certainly taken the appropriate measures.

“Sophie, it's on you now. Eliot, I need you here.”

“On my way,” Eliot's voice is brusque and short. Nate can hear him hitting someone in the background. The sound shouldn't be as comforting as it is.

There's probably something wrong with him.

Well, besides the gunshot.

He listens to Sophie close the deal (the real one), before he finally lets himself pass out.

When he wakes up, it's to the beeping of hospital monitors. He's instantly tense, but a hand comes down on his own, and he brings a frenzied gaze around to look at Sophie, who's looking right back at him with a look on her face that he can't decipher. Behind her, Hardison and Parker are trying to count the number of times one of them had been shot, pretended to have been shot, stabbed, kidnapped, blown up, or beaten up. Sophie's thumb rubs over the back of his hand as Hardison decides to discount Eliot in their figures, since Eliot's entire job is to be beaten up.

“Hey,” she says, voice soft and intimate. It makes Nate want to be anywhere besides the hospital.

“Hey,” he returns, and tries to sit up. She tightens her fingers over his hand and he stops, half because she looks like she'll hold him down and half because it really, really hurts to move. “Did we... did everything...?”

“We got the bad guys, Nate, but this time, they nearly took you with them.”

He tries to blow it off, waving his free hand weakly at her. “I had it totally under control.”

Sophie sighs at him, and shakes her head. “That's what I'm afraid of, Nate.”

A nurse comes in with the perfectly timed news that visiting hours are over, and that it's time for his painkillers. He's glad to take any excuse he can to get out of the conversation Sophie was trapping him in.

The second time he wakes up, he doesn't open his eyes for awhile. He can still hear the monitor beeping behind him, but somehow, he knows it's nighttime now. He entertains himself for awhile trying to continue where Parker and Hardison left off, and finds he hasn't been keeping very good track of all of their close calls either. Sophie probably has.

Nate's okay with it, though. So far, they've done fine, and with every close call, they get more careful, in some respects. He knows that Hardison runs background checks on everyone, clients and marks, at least twice. He knows that Hardison also runs them all through facial recognition, to cover all his bases. Getting burned more than one job in a row doesn't sit well with any of them. He knows that Eliot has been training all of them in hand to hand combat. He knows that Parker has rigging designed for each one of them. He knows that Sophie spends more time building aliases with Hardison than she does auditioning anymore.

He knows that with every close call they pull out of, they trust him more on his next crazy plan. And because he knows all these things about his team, he knows, too, that as much as it hurts now, Sophie will forgive him for this later. Right now, she's asleep, arm stretched over the hospital bed. Her dark hair casts a sharp contrast against the bright hospital blankets, and Nate is almost overcome with the urge to wake her up.

He does it unintentionally when he tried to sit up, hissing in pain and curling in over his abdomen. Sophie lifts her head, hair tousled and imprints of the sheets red on her cheeks. She fusses over him and helps him lay back, and Nate watches her put herself together as she settles back in her uncomfortable hospital chair.

“I thought visiting hours were over,” he rasps, and finds himself wishing for a glass of water.

“They make exceptions for wives,” she says, and Nate raises his eyebrows at her.

“We're not married.”

Sophie's voice slides naturally into a gentle Texan lilt, and she replies, “Oh yes we are, sweetheart. Why, I just could not believe that my fool husband was packing in a movie theater and it misfired. I said, no, my Tommy is far too smart for that.”

Nate smiles and shifts carefully in bed, angling his body toward her. “The Bakers, I presume.”

She smiles at him, and suddenly she's Sophie again. “You scared us, Nate.”

“Scared you,” he corrects, and she narrows her eyes at him.

“Yes, me, too. You had to have known he was carrying a gun.”

“It wasn't his style to use it.” He tries to shrug and stops himself short. He always forgets how interconnected the body is until he hurts the middle of it. Once the core is hurt, everything hurts.

“Nate,” Sophie's voice is admonishing, but she drops the subject. “Go back to sleep. You're being discharged tomorrow. We'll talk then.”

He nods his agreement, and shifts over in the bed, patting the thin slice of mattress next to him. “Come on. Sleeping in that chair is going to kill your back, and you're going to need it if you're going to haul me around til this heals.”

She shares the bed with him because she knows he's only half kidding.

For some reason, the nurses don't find it nearly as amusing as they do when they find them there in the morning.


End file.
